An owner or manager of one or more structural assets often has a desire or requirement to monitor conditions at such structural assets. In particular, the owner or manager may have a desire or requirement to prevent adverse conditions at such structural assets.
As one example, a utility company may have a desire or requirement to prevent vegetation from growing on or otherwise encroaching on utility infrastructure such as utility poles and/or utility wires. As other vegetation-based examples, railways may be legally required to keep a specified buffer zone between rail tracks and vegetation; city governments may need to keep sidewalks clear of overhanging tree branches; and transit authorities may need to ensure overhead clearance for transit vehicles relative to tree branches or other vegetation. As additional examples, the owner or manager of building assets (e.g., residential homes, factories, office buildings, etc.) or infrastructure (e.g., bridges, roads, etc.) may desire to prevent structural failure, damage to the asset, or other adverse conditions at the building assets or infrastructure.
Monitoring of conditions at a significant volume of structural assets presents a number of challenges, including, for example, the operational cost associated with manual assessment of conditions at each individual asset. Such operational costs are particularly acute if monitoring must be performed at a relatively high frequency. For example, in the case of utility infrastructure, a utility company is typically required to perform regular (e.g., annual) inspection visits by a special-purpose survey crews (e.g., “scouting”) of millions of miles of utility infrastructure to identify sites where encroachment is occurring (or likely to occur in the near future). As a consequence of such challenges, performance today is relatively poor. For example, some sources estimate that the majority of unplanned power outage minutes are due to vegetation issues. Thus, the occurrence of adverse conditions at structural assets such as utility infrastructure causes a significant societal and monetary cost.